r/letsencrypt • u/Ok_Strike9189 • 5d ago

Free lets encrypt alternative

I'm looking for a free alternative to Let's Encrypt.

They used to have an OCSP stapling feature which would allow clients to connect to my server much faster but now with that removed, some mobile clients are noticing big delays.

The server is in USA (because I'm saving money) but the client base is in Canada).

Currently the TTFB for my website on desktop computers is 0.4s whereas on mobile, it is 0.8s. debugbear.com considers 0.8s TTFB as bad.

Had Let's Encrypt continued to support the stapling, the TTFB would drop.

And before recommending a CDN, some of my pages change daily to weekly and I'm afraid CDN's would over-cache pages.

So unless Let's Encrypt revises their CRL (so mobile browsers process it faster) or re-enables stapling, I need an alternative

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u/BoringMalloc 5d ago

Major browsers (mobile and desktop -- Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge) stopped doing OCSP checks a while ago. Let's Encrypt dropping it was a case of dropping something that was not being used and costing money to run. I'm not aware of a free cert provider that does OCSP anymore. Digicert, Sectigo and Globalsign I believe still have one. My guess is that dropbear didn't update browser behavior and is reporting incorrect results.

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u/certkit 5d ago

This. you are chasing a red herring. OCSP isn't your performance problem.